More Than You Bargain For
by Mind of the Childishly Naive
Summary: He'll be fifteen in February and he thinks it's a real mother fuckin' shame he ain't robbed nothin' yet.


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More Than You Bargain For

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Ed the Third is not a young man of thought, he is a young man of action.

The gas station door jangles softly when he pushes it open, alerting the cashier. Ed moves to the back of the station without looking at him. He isn't balking, he just may as well get a coke while he's in here; I mean it isn't like he's really worried about getting the money. It's when he's leaning into the cooler that he notices he isn't alone in the station. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a blonde about his own age thumbing through magazines an isle over, near the front.

Well, it's just one other guy.

Ed lets the cooler door fall closed and heads for the counter.

He sets the 16 oz. up, reaching under his coat on the pretense of getting his wallet as the cashier wordlessly punches the register. To his right and slightly behind him, the other guy slides the magazine back into it's rack. Ed's hand closes around his gun, the cash register _pings_ open, and right when Ed is drawing his gun he hears the safety click off another one. The gun appears in his peripheral vision, the color drains from the cashier's face, and the voice behind him demands,

"Gimme the money!"

This is the most infuriating fucking thing Ed has ever heard in his entire fucking life.

He whips around, pulling his own gun under the other guy's arm so that they are both suddenly staring down a short barrel. He was obviously expected to flinch, because some amount of shock flickers across the blonde's face, behind his sunglasses.

"Back off, mother fucker!" Ed shouts, "_I'm _robbin' this store!"

The other teen glares at him.

"The _fuck _you are! I had my gun out first, bitch, now get outta my way!"

"_You _get outta _my_ fuckin' way!"

And Ed pulls the trigger.

Of course, his aim isn't as good as he thinks it is and the other teen is faster. The bullet only grazes his shoulder as he lurches back into a shelf, upsetting the chips and candy bars, and he fires his own gun. Ed dodges out of the way, down an isle, and once he's out of sight, he looks back toward the register, mouth open in disbelief.

"Man!" he shouts at his assailant, "You shot my mother fuckin' coke!"

The other teen lets out a bark of laughter and shoots a can of ravioli off the shelf above Ed the Third's head.

Unheeded by either of his would-be robbers, the cashier sets a paper bag full of money on the counter, praying they'll take it and leave, and dives for cover. He mashes the alarm button as the gas station explodes in a volley of bullets, jars and bags and glass shattering in the midst of it all. Setting behind where the blonde teenager is taking cover, the slushie machine takes quite a beating before Ed the Third finally empties his clip. Aiming between the shelves, he pulls the trigger four times before he realizes this, and he swears.

"FUCK, man! I'm outta damn bullets!" he calls, dropping the empty clip.

He doesn't have another one.

"I dunno why y'sound so upset, you can't aim for shit, anyway," the other teen laughs, and stands up, his back to the shelf.

He peers over the top of the busted potato chip bags, and is surprised when Ed jumps up into view, his arm raised. Ed throws a can of icing across the station and his opponent ducks back behind the shelf. The can misses him by almost a foot and bangs loudly off the dilapidated slushie machine.

"Man, what the _fuck_ you _doin'?"_ the blonde shouts, exasperated, standing again and raising his gun.

He shoots the second can out of Ed's hand when he pops up over the shelf.

"I tol' you _I was robbin' this fuckin' store!"_ Ed repeats determinedly, grabbing up another can and hurling it over the few shelves between them.

While the other teen is dodging the third can, Ed runs out from behind the shelf and just makes it to the isle parallel to his opponent before the blonde straightens up and fires again. The bullet ricochets off the wide tile floor, and Ed throws his shoulder against the shelf.

He falls forward with it when it gives, and the other teen barely manages to scramble out of the way in time.

Over the resounding crash, they both hear the police sirens.

The blonde teenager looses some of his nerve, now, throwing an anxious glance toward the shattered outside windows before ducking back down behind one of the remaining shelves. Three police cars are pulling up alongside Ed the Third's black hummer; most of the officers converge on the gas station door, guns at the ready, but one of them stops to take notice of the plates on the car and waves his comrades down. Hand on his gun, the officer pushes open the door first.

"Ed!" he calls, surveying the war zone and the cashier that tentatively reappears, shaking all over.

Groaning and struggling to push himself up off the fallen shelf, Ed mutters an irritated _"fuck"_ under his breath as he stands.

"_What?"_ he snaps, spreading his arms.

The officer mimics the gesture incredulously, "What the _hell_ are you doing?"

"Robbin' the store."

"Your grandfather _owns_ this store, Ed," the officer says, "What are you _robbing _it for?"

Ed shrugs his shoulders.

Still crouched behind the shelf, the blonde teenager regards Ed with stunned indignity, "Man, you _know cops AND_ your grandfather _owns _the mother _fuckin' gas station?"_ He almost sounds angry by the time he finishes the question. Ed the Third turns to look at him, waving a hand at the officer picking his way across the station.

"Yeah," he says dismissively, "That's Murphey."

"Ed, who're you talking to?" Murphey asks, exasperated.

Ed points, and the other teen flinches, swearing. Murphey draws level with them both before he can move, notices him, _and_ the gun he's still holding. That's also when the cashier pipes up to an accompanying officer and tells the whole agonizing story.

The blonde teen doesn't go quietly, but in the end their guns are confiscated, and they both wind up in the back of the police car while the mess is sorted out; but Ed the one out of the two that is not read his Miranda rights, and is not handcuffed, and this is because he is a Wuncler and he is just being escorted home. Murphey holds the car door open while he gets in, saying, "You know your not supposed to be driving yet, Ed, you don't even have your permit. Give me the keys."

Ed grudgingly digs the keys out of his coat pocket.

Murphey takes them and leans into the back seat, pointing between the two teenagers.

"Be nice, boys," he says, and shuts them in.

Ed crosses his arms, and slumps back, putting his knees up against the seat in front of him. He shifts to look at his companion, who has his forehead pressed against the glass, staring up at the gas station sign. Neither of them speak for a long moment, and it's the blonde who breaks the silence.

"So you're a Wuncler," he says, glancing over.

Ed raises his shoulder again and leans over, extending a hand, "Third one."

"Gin Rummy," the teen says, mildly surprised by the show of politeness and moving both cuffed hands in order to shake. He gestures when he leans back into his own seat. "So what're you robbin' y'own store for?"

Ed shrugs again, recrossing his arms.

"Didn't know it was one of ours," he admits.

Looking out the window, Rummy chuckles, "I believe that." He nods towards the hummer. "That your ride?"

"Sorta," Ed evades, unwilling to admit he swiped it out of the garage without permission. He sits up to take a better look around the parking lot. "Where's yours?"

Rummy laughs.

"Man, I ain't got no car, I walked my fuckin' ass here."

Ed takes a moment to process this.

"So you ain't even got nobody to drive you nowhere or nothin'?"

"Nooo," Rummy drawls, amused, and jangles his handcuffs.

"So where you goin' now?"

Oh, _this_ is fucking _hilarious._

"T'_jail_, mother fucker, where you _think_ I'm goin'?" Rummy asks, half-laughing. He sits up, away from the seat, and starts with his thumb, ticking off fingers while he recounts, _"Attempted armed robbery. Two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Carrying an unregistered handgun. Assaulting an officer. Resisting arrest. Vandalism."_ He pauses, holding the seven digits aloft, and then gestures furiously with them at Ed. "And on top a _all 'at shit_, a fuckin' _Wuncler!_ They'll put me _under_ the Goddamn jail for shootin' at a _Wuncler."_

Rummy shakes his head, flops back into his seat, and stares out the window. Folded in on his own side of the car, Ed frowns, chewing this over.

"I shot at you first," he points out after thinking about it for a while.

"Yeah, and your aim is fuckin' bad as _hell_, dude, you need t'work on 'at shit if you gonna go around shootin' people."

"Aw, _man_, speakin' a aim, it was fuckin' _crazy_ when you shot 'at icin' outta my hand."

"The fuck even possesses you t'_throw_ somethin' at somebody with a gun?"

"'At was _survival instinct_."

"Wasn't no _survival instinct,_ mother fucker, you were fightin' for two or three hundred bucks and a _coke_."

"And you shot my _fuckin' coke_, too, dude, I _forgot _about 'at."

"Your the one 'at moved, I was aimin' f'your big head."

"You _owe_ me a coke."

"The fuck I do, man, _you _own _me_ a shoulder."

The front driver's side door opens and both teenagers fall silent, Rummy glaring at the back of officer Murphey's head as he slides into the car, saying, "Alright, Ed, Davis is gonna drive your car home for you. We'll drop our little felon here off at the station and then I'll take you home."

"Nah," he's with me," Ed says.

Murphey turns around in his seat, frowning through the protective meshed bars.

"What?"

Ed gestures across at Rummy, who seems even more surprised than Murphey does when the young Wuncler repeats himself, "He's with me." He sits up straighter in his seat, impertinent as ever and daring to be contradicted. Murphey stares at him for a long moment, his mouth open, then raises his eyes to the roof the car, probably asking for strength, and sighs.

He reaches for his keys.

"I don't believe this," he mutters under his breath, and Rummy can't honestly believe it, either, until he passes the keys back through the bars, "Uncuff him."

Taking the keys, Ed fumbles to do just that, but it's harder that it looks and the key is _really_ fucking small. Rummy sits sideways in his seat as they pull out of the gas station parking lot, and finally waves Ed off his hands, gesturing exasperatedly for the keys.

"_Give _me those, y'already fucked everything else up today, I'd like t'get outta these before the snow starts meltin'."

Ed hands them over without argument and the handcuffs fall off within seconds under Rummy's deft fingers.

"So you wanna come over?" Ed asks, slouching back in his seat.

Rummy shrugs, grinning.

"Hell, I ain't got no other plans."

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(A/n) My BROTP needs more love. They scream dysfunction and I LOVE IT! I kept thinking they should have met in grammar school (because in my head!canon Rummy comes from a less-well-off family and the two of them together as diabolical nine-year-olds under Wuncler leniency is absolute thought-candy), but my sister suggested this and it was just so PERFECTLY THEM that I couldn't argue. (I'm fairly sure it never says when they met in the series; this is head!canon) Please review! C:

-Motcn


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